Recycle Reuse Record

"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. I think we're up to episodes number 22 now, so we're getting quite a nice back catalog of episodes and we're getting quite a lot of feedback from people as well, saying that they've listened to the shows and there's a nice mix of the questions being answered for people in a couple of more detailed shows. So we're going to carry on that trend on the slightly more detailed ones this time and dive into an issue that's come up a couple of times recently. And it's. It's been a question that we've had right from the start. So we're going to talk about people wanting to reuse existing content in order to get their book published. So we've got some tricks, tips, pointers, and some. Some best practice advice for how to make the most of that or some things to avoid. So pleasure, as always. Well, not as always, but this week to be joined by Betsy again. Betsy, how you doing?

Guest: Great. It's good to be here. As always, as always.

Stuart: Fantastic. So we're going to dive into.

Guest: We get asked this a lot. So I'm excited to maybe put some information out there to some people who are thinking about doing a book with us. Or a book in general.

Stuart: Yeah, exactly. It's surprising, isn't it? You tend to get kind of completely unrelated people coming through with similar questions. I guess it's the definition of coincidence that things happen that are unusual. But definitely had a little bit of a spate of these recently. And it does seem to be that thing that comes up almost once a quarter or so. Someone will come asking. So this week we're going to talk about reuse, recycle, reduce or a variation of that campaign. So we're going to tweak it slightly into recycle, reuse, record for the purpose of the book.

Guest: Fantastic. Let's dive right in if you want. Ready?

Stuart: Perfect. Let's go. I've got coffee by the side of me, so my voice should hold out for the 30 minutes or so.

Guest: Fantastic. Why might people want to recycle a podcast or webinar or maybe a presentation they did from the stage for their book versus something they've recorded versus recording, all starting from the very beginning. Why would someone want to do that?

Stuart: So I think it's. People think it's the easier option because quite often we'll hear that people have got something that was well received in another medium and then the idea of simply being able to reuse it and repurpose it, recycle that exact content. I think it's very appealing to people thinking it's the fastest thing to do. So we've got a. A bit of a. A first for the book. More show. We're actually trying to work off an outline here to keep some structure to it. So I'm going to try my best not to dive through our outlined questions and. And cover everything all at once. But it's obviously a little bit cyclical as we go through it. But I think there's that. That's the main reason I see for people coming back and saying, I've got something already that I can already reuse. So the benefits, and we were talking about this just before we recorded. It's difficult to think of the exact benefits that people think they're getting by doing it that way. Time, I think, is the most obvious one. People think it's quicker. The only other benefit I can think is that whatever they're talking about, recycling is, was very well received and they got a lot of good feedback. But I think the problem is that people don't necessarily consider that it was good feedback or it was well received within the context that it was being used. So I think that context element is really the difference between something that's fantastically received and something that is less well received because it's not quite hitting the mark. I think re recording, which is always the suggestion that we make the benefit there, is that it's 100% on message and it's been recorded with a specific purpose in mind and we'll. We'll cycle back around to that a little bit later on. But I think the main thing that people think they're getting is the benefit of speed. Now, of course, people have listened to the show before. People have listened to the. The way that we suggest people write a book is to do an outline and then record it and have the recording transcribed and then edit and produce from there. So actually the overhead of doing something new, it's not like we're suggesting people go away for six months and write a whole new book where they might have something on the shelf that is almost fit for purpose. It's that we're suggesting doing something absolutely fit for purpose that's designed for a particular purpose and doing that in a way that's actually probably quicker than doing anything else anyway, when you look at the overhead of then having to edit and tweak and fix and fill in the gaps. So that's the impression that I get the number of people I Talk to, obviously yourself and Susan. Talk to more people in the early stages and people who often say, I've got something that I want to recycle. Is that a similar feel that you get people coming in with? The reason they want to do it is perhaps speed or they just think it's a smaller piece of work to do.

Guest: Absolutely. I think it's, you know, people are, we're all stressed for time and so strapped for time. And so I think, oh, I have this, I've got these recordings, these four hours of podcast or this presentation I did, you know, for such and such group. And I'm just going to send it over to you and we'll just use that. And while they, it probably is a great presentation or, you know, a great podcast or whatever it is that they've used, they're not thinking about the like from the stage. For example, as we spoke about this earlier, you know, about maybe pointing out people or you know, the hand gestures that sometimes go along with things, you know, with the conversation. And so it's probably not as great of a tool to use, you know, as they probably are envisioning. But we've done it and we've done some that are. We've done it, we've done it. It tends to be a little bit more work, but it can, you know, it can be done.

Stuart: And I think we'll get into, as we. A little bit later on, we'll get into when it's worked and when it hasn't worked. I think from that recycling point of view. So again, we've got recycle, reuse and record. And the difference between recycling, reuse in my mind is recycling just looking at using the exact same thing again, whereas reusing, it's utilizing the same thing in a slightly different way. So as far as recycling goes. So you mentioned that people were talking about using a presentation they've done from stage. I think some of the other things we've seen is people using a collection of blog posts or some written material. Webinars is the third one. So speaking from stage, blog post type material and webinars tend to be the same thing. So there is a compelling argument for reusing that content, I think, but just recycling it really, it comes down to. It's more problematic than you think because the intent is different. So I think going into creating those assets in the first place, whatever those first things were that you created, the reason that you did that in the webinar and the presentation, from stage point of view, more often than not, it's in a sales type environment. So you're looking at closing some people in a room or from a webinar, the call to action being actually to make the sale because quite often those things are later in the funnel. So if we tie it back to the eight profit activators and profit activator number two being to identify invisible prospects. Well, in both of those environments the invisible prospects are already identified because they're in the room or they're on the webinar. So quite often it's, it's. They're created in the context of profit activator number three, educate and motivate people towards making a decision. So the one of the negatives against just recycling some content is the intent is different. So the language is different, the approach is different, the structure of it is different. In those live environments or those, those other environments, it's towards making a close rather than being the first step in the conversation, in identifying invisible prospects and beginning the conversation and then leading people to the next stage which educate and motivate. I think you hit the nail on the head talking about a couple of the other problems around the little language differences, where if you're speaking to a set of slides, speaking to something that's visually in front of people, speaking to an audience that's in the room, you can't help but avoid using language which is relevant to that situation. And then once that's transcribed and written into, into a book, into a document, you. It's very difficult, or not very difficult, I guess, but very time consuming to go through and correct all of those things. Whereas if it's recorded, knowing that it's going to be to a blind audience, then the way that you speak is slightly different and you don't use those examples, worst case being, as you mentioned, sort of turning and pointing to something behind you that obviously doesn't exist in the book. So again, I think looking at that speed element, if you're comparing it to six months of writing to create a book, then recycling something that you've already used is probably quicker. But again, that's not what we're talking about. We're comparing it to the fastest process of writing a book. The fastest process of writing something that will lead towards, lead towards something that you can reuse. So that's maybe a good time to move on to the reuse category which is talking about using the assets, leveraging the assets you've made, but using them in slightly different context. I can't think on the recycle front. I can't think of another example other than that people have come to us with. So it's either a webinar, a live stage speech presentation, or some free written material. And the only example that I can think of is blog posts. Can you think of another example?

Guest: No, I think the blog post was one I was just thinking about because we had one recently with the blog post that when the writer was posting this blog, it was strictly for a friends and family kind of thing. In her mind, putting it all together, she thought, oh, these are good enough. But when she actually saw it, she wasn't happy with it. So it was great for that moment of updating her family while she was in a different place and couldn't get them. So but the blog. And you wouldn't think that writing something, you know, because we're looking at two versions of writing would be as difficult. It was when she saw it, she was very surprised by how it was very choppy. It was, you know, when you're writing to your friends and family, you know, you're not necessarily using, you know, structured sentences. And, and her original plan was to use. Just to use as exactly like that. But when, when she saw it, she was like, whoa, wait a minute, this is a book. And it was completely, you know, took her by surprise. So.

Stuart: And it's context again, isn't it? I think even as you say with the, the written word. So in the reuse section, we'll get onto in a minute. I think we can talk about some ways that that could have been handled better. But I think as far as recycled goes, I think that's the, the least. That's the last suggestion that we would make to someone is that something that you've done in a different context is perfectly fine for this context and doing it that way is quicker than anything else you could do. I think the reuse option is going to be faster and allows you to leverage what you've already done in a way that kind of compels and engages more people rather than just trying to reuse it directly. It's so, it's so surprising. I mean, coming to this as a marketing tool, coming to it from knowing what the job of work is. So thinking about the language in terms of the outcome, it doesn't take much for it to sound off. It doesn't take much for it to hit to miss the mark. Rather, the more Cheese Less Whiskers podcast that that Dean runs the whole premise around that the Cheese and Whiskers premises, it's, it's very small step between being very cheese focused, very offering someone something with no commercial intent, and then as soon as you start revealing those whiskers, as soon as that commercial intent starts coming through, it's very quick and easy to see. And the same with writing. It's easy to see if something isn't, isn't necessarily congruent with the context in which it's positioned. It's easy to tell if it's been repurposed. And that is, that's unnecessary because reuse is, is the better option, right?

Guest: Absolutely. Absolutely. Should we talk? I had a question, something you just said and it completely lost my mind.

Stuart: Well, let me move on to reuse and then I'm sure as soon as I start talking it will, it will jump back into mind. So we can always circle back. So the difference then between recycling, reuse, recycle, just using exactly what you've already used under the, with the hope that it will be quicker and it will be good enough to use. Reuse is then more looking at, okay, we've got these assets, so how can we use them in a way that leverages both what you've already got and what you can now create in order to make a bigger thing than the, the individual parts. So you might well have a whole load of blog posts that you've written in the past. You might have a presentation or webinar that's had high conversion rates. So what can you do to boost that, to leverage that, to add a book to the, to the funnel, to the process and really make the whole thing work a lot more effectively than if, than, than just recycling. So I think one of the main things is that it allows you to add perceived value. We talked on a couple of previous shows about this concept of follow up in the funnel and how you engage with people after they've opted in and what you can do to add value to that funnel without adding a lot of overhead and effort. So a lot of times I think people think about the book writing process and particularly if they haven't been exposed to the 90 minute book process, that's always a big job of work that people are taking on or considering taking on, adding then a funnel onto the back end and suggesting to people that they have a structured way of engaging with people, of following up with people. There's always a risk that that just sounds like you're adding on more and more work and if you had all of the time in the world it would be fine. But everyone's time constrained and creating all of these additional things are A headache and overhead. So if you can find a way to leverage some of the things that you've already got, then that allows you to get the leverage and the benefit of having a funnel ready to follow up with people after they've identified themselves. So again, circling back to the eight profit activators, profit number two, identifying invisible leads, which is what the books are very, very good at. And then profit number three is educate and motivate. And thinking of those two things as something completely separate or independent bits of the puzzle really allows you to understand that the book's job of work is to get people to raise their hand and identify themselves and then follow up with them afterwards. You're not trying to convince people to take an action in the book itself. So leveraging some of the other assets that you've already got, leveraging the podcast or the presentation or the webinar, leveraging those as follow up items is a great way to reuse what you've already got, reuse all of that work that you've already done, but in a way that adds to it, not, not instead

Guest: of right, very good.

Stuart: So the other thing that it gives you the opportunity to do it, reusing an existing piece of content is to create kind of multiple entry points into a funnel. So depending on what thing you're looking at, reusing, depending on how broad that is, there's quite possibly two or three ways that someone could get to that same content in a way that made sense. So the recycle option would be just to get it transcribed and reuse that as one entry point. But the reuse option allows you to record something new that leads to the asset. And because you're recording something new, it allows you to tailor that specifically to the audience that you're trying to engage with. So quite often, like from a presentation from stage, let's say it's a 30, 40 hour long presentation, you're probably going to cover five or six specific points in that those five or six specific points, you could break those down into five or six different follow up items. So rather than just re recording the whole thing and turning that into one book that does one job of work. And this concept that we talked about a couple of times before, about breadth rather than depth. So there's always a risk that people try and go too broad and almost demonstrate how much they know, rather than answering one particular question comprehensively and adding depth to it and starting the relationship with someone by answering that, that one question completely and then leading on to other things. So in a broad Presentation that you're perhaps trying to reuse, breaking that down into several different ways, means that there's several different elements, several different points of value that you can share with people afterwards, and several different entry points in. So if the subject was something like, I'm just looking at a flyer on my desk here for the local cycling club. So a talk that you gave to a cycling workshop might cover things like clothing training, diet and nutrition maintenance from a presentation. It would make sense to cover those elements because it's. That's the context in which you're delivering it. Writing a book just based on those four elements. Again, not that. I mean, there's no right or wrong answer. There's definitely scenarios where it might be the way of going, but instead we're suggesting create one book that talks about maintenance, another book that talks about clothing, another book that talks about training. And each of those go deep, answering the questions, and then lead back to that asset that you're trying to reuse, lead back to that as a way of adding on the value and building up the funnel. So that's three or four different entry points to the same piece of content recorded in. Potentially it would take you four or five hours to get all of that recorded, when in reality, by the time you've edited the presentation, edited the thing you're trying to recycle, then it would take probably not far off that amount of time anyway. And in the reuse example, you've got four funnels out there for assets, engaging four different groups of people that might not necessarily. Although they're all related, they might not necessarily. Each person might not resonate to the whole, whereas each person might resonate to one individual piece of the puzzle. So again, it's just a way of looking at it slightly more strategically, rather than saying, I should do something, I've got something. This is the quick and dirty way of getting it done. It will be fine. Think about it a little bit more strategically, add a little bit more time to it, but not an excessive amount of time to it. Make sure that it's fit for purpose in the first place. And then you've got multiple funnels serving multiple audiences without the same overhead or without a kind of multiple of the overhead of time you'd have to put in to create all of those things independently or to try and get the same amount of coverage, the same amount of engagement. If you were just trying to recycle the one individual piece.

Guest: Very good. Okay, let's talk about the many ways that you can reuse content.

Stuart: I Think that's a great point as well because kind of building on that, people think it's difficult to then or more time consuming to get these follow up funnels in place. We've already said that someone wants to reuse the great thing that we've got and we're definitely not saying that what you've got isn't great, but being able to reuse it in a way that, that's easy and effective and engaging really is this kind of multiplier for the funnel that you're trying to create. And at the end of the day, I mean that's a good point as well, that what you're trying to create is a funnel. The book is almost irrelevant to the funnel. The book where we are at the moment is there's some authority that goes with the book. Publishing is still seen as a platform that's inaccessible to people. There's a certain amount of cache or credibility that goes along with writing. So all of these things that add an extra, make the boat go faster. They add a bit more bang to the funnel. The funnel is the main thing. What you're trying to do is identify invisible prospects at the front end and then over a period of time educate and motivate and compel people to agree that you're the right person to meet the needs, meet their, their requirements. So all of those steps in the middle by reusing this thing that you've got in various different ways is a great way and a very efficient and effective way of filling that funnel with touch points. There's a book called Wombat Selling by an Australian university lecturer, I forget whose name is Gleason. I think his surname is. It went out of print for a while, so I'm not even sure if it's available now. But I'll try and find a note for the, a link for the show notes. But the main point of the, the methodology is that salespeople or people looking to close a deal aren't empowered to close the deal. It's the customer that's empowered to close the deal. All that the salesperson can do or all of the marketer can do is put opportunities in front of the customer so that a closing opportunity arises and they make the move. So it talks about check move. So in, in chess, the salesperson or the marketer can make check moves. You can put the person into check, but they can always step away from it. The sales and marketing person is never in a position to put them in checkmate and close it because the decision is always ultimately with someone else. So the book focuses on less about the kind of Glengarry Glen Ross always be closing, but rather always be checking. Always put check moves in front of people and don't worry so much about the, the checkmate moves, the closing moves, because it's just a fun one's a function of the other. And you just get too stressed out if you just start thinking about check moves. So start thinking about checkmate moves instead. You have got control over check moves. Reusing the content in a way that gives you the most number of check moves is the most number of ways to put someone in check. The most number of ways to give someone the opportunity to make that closing decision. That buying decision with you is much more effective than trying to write the book. So you've got one move and you're trying to put all of your ammunition into creating that one checkmate move in the book itself. If you've got the opportunity to create many things from the one seed piece, from the one source piece of material, then you've got many more opportunities to touch more people in more ways. There's no way of saying that that doesn't sound dodgy, but there's, there's. There's more opportunities to, to create things and put them in front of people in a way that they might resonate with. So for example, from. Let's take the stage presentation as, as an example, let's assume that you've got it recorded, taking that and then making it into a number of touch points after the book. So step one is record something that is the lead into the subject, answering the one question as comprehensively as possible, basing that question on a real pressing need that the customer's got. We'll touch on that again a little bit in a minute. But leading from that profit number two asset of getting people to raise their hand and identify themselves into the educate and motivate people towards making a decision. There's lots of things that you can do. So, so you could take the strip the audio out and provide the audio as a audio, follow along to the book that you've written. No additional work or limited additional work. Changing the format, package it up in a way that it gives it a name and there's. It's clearly a staging process, but immediately adding value by giving someone a second thing, despite the fact that the second thing is very similar to the first thing, it just builds on it. You could take that audio and split it into, as we said before, assuming that you covered with a bike example, assuming you had four or five main topics that you covered in the session, you could split each of those out and then you've immediately got a six or seven step follow up email campaign. So someone opting for the book in the first place. You've then got six or seven touch points that talk about another related specific element in a email campaign. And in each of those emails you've got the opportunity to present someone with the offer of taking the next step, the profit activator number four Make Mafia offer to make it easy for people to get started. Every one of these touch points is the opportunity to put a profit activate number four offer in front of someone. Again, if you just go with the big bang approach, you're trying to put it all into the one book and trying to convince people to take an action at the end of it. You miss out on these opportunities to repeatedly be in front of the people who aren't yet ready to convert. The only people that you're targeting is the people who are ready right here, right now. So follow up on an email drip campaign. You could turn it into a screen share. So if you've got the audio from a presentation, just let that audio run over a screen share a set of slides where you either repeat the slides that you had on screen for the actual event or, or create a new set of slides if that's not relevant to walk along and give people a visual thing as well as an audio thing that they're listening to. Again, that's adding to the value because you're delivering something to someone after the, after the original book rather than just trying to recycle it in the first place. But you're then triggering people's audio and visual stimulants so some people will resonate with that more so than, than just the audio. I mean, to be honest, there's nothing stopping you doing all of these things from that one piece. You could take the audio, you could strip it into a drip campaign, you could put a slideshare, a presentation over the top of it and send the same people, all of them. Because the point is you don't know who's going to resonate with which piece at what point in time. So all of these additional check moves from this one source piece of material, rather than just trying to put it all in the book where it's not going to, it's not going to be dialed in as specific to serve any particular purpose. You're now making it serve many purposes and potentially, I mean, we're talking about one funnel, but it's not too much of a step to think, okay, well, that's one funnel, but I can reorder these pieces and refocus these pieces. And then I've got several funnels targeting slightly different groups. The A screen share. You could do a screen share where you're actually doing it live to camera and walking through some. Some of the pieces of information you can create infographics or tutorials or images or quotes, or all of these things can be created from this one piece. And it's the opportunity to follow up with people over the long term. So rather than just recycling the presentation and taking what appears to be the quick option and just get it into a book and get it out there, think about the slightly more strategic option of how can you best use these assets in a way that engages the most possible number of people the most. The highest number of wombat moves, the highest number of check moves in order to get the offer in front of people the most number of times. So you're more likely to be front of mind for someone when they're at the point in their own buying cycle that they're ready to take that next step. That was a long day.

Guest: That was a long. But you know what, There's a lot of valuable information there. And I have a feeling that there's going to be people who listen to this podcast and when they come to us and want to use the audio, they're going to use all of the reasons why they should right there. Because that was all of a lot of great information that you just gave out on what to do and how to use it. You know, just moving forward, the idea of the drip email campaign, I mean, that's over and over again, people, you know, touching, getting in touch with people. And I have a feeling that this is going to be. I'll be approached with these like. But Stuart says, and I'm sure I'll. I'll hear it later on.

Stuart: So that's exactly the case. So just in case anyone's kind of selectively misremembering the point that I'm trying to make, or potentially, I'm not making it as clear out loud as it is in my head, but we're absolutely not talking about recycling the content. We're talking about reusing it. So to my mind, and I know that we've worked with people who have done this, and I don't want to suggest that people are doing silly things, but to my mind, there is absolutely no circumstance that I would ever just try and reuse Something that I'd recorded in another way. Because for the overhead of spending an additional 60 minutes to re record something, or to record something rather, that's absolutely 100% targeted the way I want it to be targeted. No amount of. I just really struggle to see the logic behind it. I'm saving 60 minutes of my time recording, but the likelihood of the recycle piece being good enough to use with no additional work is virtually zero. And maybe I'm just a really slow reader, but it would take me 60 minutes to read the transcript of something, to even pick out what the good bits and the bad bits are, let alone to then go in and fix it afterwards. So to me, the benefits just nowhere near outweigh the benefits of reuse. Reuse, I think, is a fantastically good idea. There's an example where someone had a number of pieces of content in there. Those pieces of content were initially written for more of a personal family use. It wasn't necessarily intended that there would be a big audience. But over time the audience for it did grow and the intent behind it changed slightly. So it was more. Rather than sharing stories with a one family member, the audience was there, so it was sharing it with a wider group. Now, taking all of that and putting it into a book, the immediate response was the. The level of the writing and the way the language was wasn't quite as perhaps you'd expect in a book. So the opportunity there is to set that expectation to record something additional and set that expectation in the book. So recording something that led into the letters section, recording something that positioned it as what you're about to read is a developing story. You get to join me and you can see from my writing as I move from position A to position B. Yeah, exactly. The narrative of the journey. The whole purpose of the book, I think for memory was that it was to share the person's journey as they move from where they were to begin with to the position that they ended up. So setting that expectation. So if you absolutely. There's nothing wrong with including other content in the book, it's just trying to. Because that's a reuse case. The problem is trying to recycle things with. With no additional or with very limited additional oversight to it. So it's the same way. So people will probably know that the 90 minute book process, the signature 90 minute book process. The fastest way to get something out in front of people is all the books are conversation based. It's the opportunity to have Susan or one of our team be the kind of advocate for a potential customer and ask the questions that the customer might ask without them actually being there in the same room as you. So they're conversation based, but we write it in such a way that that's obvious that that's the case. That's the kind of premise of the book. It is written specifically as conversational because that's engaging and it's accessible and it's, it's not too standoffish, it's friendly. We set the expectation that the, the interviewer that Susan's there or Jonathan or Jeff or whoever's doing it, they're there asking the questions on behalf of the customer and it sets that expectation. So way the rest of the book is structured makes sense. If you just drop something on there that was a transcript, then that would be incongruent. People don't expect necessarily to see that in a book. But because we're positioning it as this is a conversation, you're almost addressing the, the reader's potential disconnect on the very first page by saying this is what you're about to read and this is why you're reading it in this particular way. The same with the reuse example. It's not so much that we're saying never under any circumstance do this, it's that we're saying the quickest. I'm going to say laziest, but I don't necessarily mean that in a derogatory sense. But the shortest way of doing it, of just recycling pure content that was done for another purpose is just not the most effective way because you don't get a chance to tailor the language in the book in the way that is the most beneficial. And in the worst case scenario, you don't even set the expectation that this might read slightly differently because of whatever reason because it was recorded in a different way. So yeah, just in case anyone does come back and say Abbott Stewart said, I'm definitely saying reuse and I'm not saying recycle. And again, even reusing in the book, I mean with that letters example, I would almost be more. Because that did turn into a very big book and it cost a lot more than just a signature 90 minute book, which again, as we said said is the fastest, most effective way of getting out in front of people. It took a lot longer. There was a lot more time for everyone involved. So this certainly isn't ticking the box of here's an effective marketing tool to get out in front of people in the fastest possible way. The end product is fine, but it Just isn't the fastest or the, the most cost effective way of doing it. So a more cost effective way of doing it may have been to re record something for an hour that specifically introduce people to the, the general concept, the, the idea that was trying to be presented in the letter and then deliver those letters as some of the follow up pieces that we just talked about. Add additional, add additional value. So let's say there were 10 letters, 10 blog posts that you wanted to refer to. In theory, each of those things that I listed. So create audio, create a drip campaign, do a screen share or slideshare, create some images and quotes and infographics. You could do those same steps for each one of those 10 things and then you'd have how many is that? Five or six? You'd have 50 or 60 pieces of follow up content that you could send to someone over a period of time. 50 or 60 check moves that you can put in front of someone and really then amplify the profit. Activate number three, the educator. Motivate people to take that next step while still leveraging what you'd originally want to leverage. But the additional cost is just 60 minutes of your time to record some additional content and then you've got something that is absolutely dialed in. Now again, I don't want to pick on that one particular book because I don't think that particular book was. There wasn't necessarily a marketing intent behind it. The intent was more of a sharing a personal journey. So not quite relevant in that sense. But does that make sense? Having something that's more tailored, more dedicated, more considered, more strategic is going to be way more effective than just trying to recycle something.

Guest: Absolutely. I totally. Again, I'm glad you went back and clarified because I think selective hearing sometimes does take place and I could hear it being brought back up at some point later on. But so I definitely, yeah, there's some great things to go along with what you said, you know, the reusing versus the recycling and some great ideas there. But I'm glad that you did mention the best way to do it is to start with the recording and to do it and have that, that focus, you know, and it's the fastest.

Stuart: I mean, as I said when we started, the only reason I think people would want to recycle is because they think it's faster. Because I don't think all that people aren't necessarily considering the effectiveness of it perhaps. So again, I mean we say this to people a lot all of the time you're in the industry you're the expert. You've been doing this for years. You know your subject. It's very easy for you to undervalue your own basic knowledge because you think it's basic. Why would anyone want to know that? And again, it's difficult sometimes for you to. And for us to think of the position of the customer and realize how much people don't know because we're creating books all day, every day. You're doing whatever your business is all day, every day. And it's easy to forget that there's perhaps a level of. Of thinking that the customer isn't necessarily thinking about. So it may be just that people aren't thinking strategically about it because they've had no. There's been no indicator, there's nothing that's suggested to them. Two things strategically about it. So again, I'm not suggesting that people are only doing this because they can't be bothered investing that extra time. It might be that no one suggested a more effective way of doing it. So. No, they have heard a more effective way of doing it. So. So stop doing it the other way. I've just looked at the clock. So we've typically try and keep these to 30 minutes, but we've run truly blasted back past that today and I think I get slightly animated about this approach and, and always have quite a lot to say on the subject. The last area of the three, then I wanted to quickly cover before we do finish then, is. Is record. So we've looked at the challenges around recycling, we've looked at the benefits of reuse. So let's quickly talk about recording and why recording has a lot more benefits to the overall funnel and just quickly close the loops on those before we wrap up.

Guest: So, yeah, I think the biggest thing we've said is it's the fastest option, you know, all said and done, it is. I hear a lot from people, the time factor, you know, I don't have a lot of time, so that's one reason why they want to use it. But when it's all said and done, I think taking that 60 minutes, that's really all you're going to have to invest in this. Whereas you've recorded something, you're trying to use it. And I think you're going to find in the long run you're going to have to do more work to it on the end. You're going to have to edit it a little bit more. I don't think you're going to be as happy with the final product in writing as you were on an audio. So I think the idea that they're saving time is probably not as accurate as they think it is. So it is the quickest. Put this way, it's 60 minutes of your time that is, that's it, you know, to get a book out. So.

Stuart: And I think it's. It's always so funny that. And again, it's probably the kind of, the conceit of being involved in this all the time that it's. It's difficult to remember that other people don't realize it. But the thought of, the thought of passing something to someone else and having it transcribed and then the job done, I can see why that's appealing. But the reality is that this thing that you pass to someone else is going to come back to you because the other person. This isn't ghostwriting. This isn't paying tens of thousands of dollars to people to take all of your words and recraft them. This is the fastest and most effective way of getting something in the, in the wrap of a book that has all of the authority and credibility out in front of people. And the way to do that is to get your words, your expertise down on the page in the best possible way the first time. Because the. We see it every single time. As soon as we disappear into an editing cycle, when there's an amount of back and forth, it's almost an exponential delay. It's almost every time you have to send an email, one direction or another, that adds five hours worth of overhead to it. So you can imagine that people are thinking, well, that's fine, I'll just send this across and then it'll be done. But the reality is that it comes back and bites you a little bit later on in the process because otherwise you're left with something that's less effective because there isn't a magic elf somewhere that's going to fix this for you or the problem comes back and lands on your plate. And if you think you haven't got the time to, you haven't got an hour to record something, you really don't have 10 hours to edit something. And to clarify what you actually meant when it wasn't as clear, when it was all sort of in black and white in front of you as you think it was in your head.

Guest: Exactly. That is exactly it. Yes, very good.

Stuart: I think the other point that we made then is that it's re recording is 100% aimed at the job of work. So we've talked, and I've talked at length in the past about creating these funnels that are clearly identifying a single target market, a group of people that the title of the book answers a specific question for. And again, sticking with the cycling example, there's quite possibly, although the community as a whole are all connected through bikes and riding, people will come to that from very different places and with very different problems or questions or challenges. And being able to record something that's absolutely targeted to that one single market, as long as that one single market is big enough, then it's going to be far more effective in an overall funnel, in a marketing campaign than writing something generic. The other thing to mention is that again, it goes back to intent. So realistically, if you were writing a campaign from scratch or thinking about a campaign from scratch, it's like going on a journey. At the end of the day, you want to know. The first thing you want to know is where you want to end up. So in the book, that's the back cover copy. The back cover copy is the call to action. It's the thing that takes people, allows people to take the next step. So starting with that is, on paper, the best place to start with, know where you want to end up and then reverse engineer it back from there. We sent out, we do, on the coaching side of the business, we do some flagship emails, some emails that we send out every week talking about different, different points that have either come up on one of the many podcasts or in one of the other programs that we've got. And reverse engineering was one of the emails that we sent out last week. I'll, I'll actually, if I can include it in the, in the show notes for this episode. But reverse engineering that outcome so that you can guide people along the journey, so you can orchestrate the journey for them is far more effective. So in the reuse example, you can then go from back cover copy to title to content, because that's really the logical way of thinking about it. You start with the end in mind. You then think about, okay, well, where are people starting from? What problem do they have? And then you create a journey that leads them from the beginning to the end. The problem of recycling it is that you're starting with the content. And no matter which way you look at it, that's less effective than doing it the proper way. In air quotes of back cover, then title, then content. Going content, then title, then back cover is the wrong way around. So effectiveness, I think, is the other key thing to doing it this way. It's just far too easy for that to be thought of as an afterthought and almost think about, okay, well, I've got this subject that I want to include. I'm sure that this title will resonate with people. And then, oh yeah, when people get to the back of the book, I should probably suggest that they do this.

Guest: Exactly. I think this has been very beneficial

Stuart: and it's felt a little ranty in part, so apologies. So the podcast will get transcribed. So if there is anything you want to skip through to then encourage you to head over to the site and look at the show notes. So that's 90minutebooks.com forward/podcasts. We'll put notes in. I've referenced a couple of things externally as well, so I'll try and get links to those both in the, in the podcast recording notes. If you listen to this on a podcast player, hopefully there'll be some links in there either. Or back on the show notes page, there'll be some extended notes in there. The subjects that we've touched on kind of tie in with a couple of other things. So we're in the process of finishing up an author business book author scorecard, which is a great way of people kind of assessing where they are in this one of the mindsets in there. If anyone's seen any of the other scorecard books. So we've got the profit activator scorecard, for example. You can see there the mindsets kind of allow you to benchmark yourself on a, on a scale of effectiveness across a certain set of mindsets. So the business book author scorecard allows you to look at these things and content and back cover, copy and titles are all kind of mindsets that are thematically developed in the scorecard. So keep an eye out for that over the next couple of weeks. We'll definitely be sure to share it. So there we go. If you head over to the show notes, then that's 90minutebooks.com podcasts. If you've got any questions for us, then we always like answering questions and ideas for future subjects. So drop us an email to podcast at 90 Minute Books. I want to sort of cross promote one of the other podcasts that we've got that Dean does. More cheese, less whiskers. If, if no one's heard that, I'll put a link to that in the, in the show notes as well. So this week's episode is with Jamie Smart, who was, who's written a 90 minute book, a scorecard book, but is also a well known and very successful author in his own right. So he's got two or three books published. And on the Mortise Less Whiskers show there was an episode late last year where Jamie was just launching his book and they were talking about local strategies within a market. Now this is a more of a traditional published book and they were looking at hitting the New York Times bestseller, which isn't necessarily the use case that we talk about but some of those ways. And then the follow up show of engaging a local audience scaled down to the concept of a particular funnel. I think there's a lot of useful information in there for people as well. So I'll stick a note to that, stick a link to that in the show notes as well.

Guest: Very good. That's awesome. Well, always good to be with you, Stuart. Yeah.

Stuart: Thank you for your time, Betsy. It's been good and we'll catch up in the next show.

Guest: Great. Sounds good.